


Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch…

by enviropony



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, Old MacBarton's farm, Where Was Clint Barton During Captain America 2?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-30
Updated: 2014-10-30
Packaged: 2018-02-23 05:18:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2535593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enviropony/pseuds/enviropony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Clint was actually doing when it all hit the fan. </p>
<p>Because Age of Ultron spoiler.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch…

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [this tumblr post](http://wayward-dragons.tumblr.com/post/101240538607/im-going-to-be-severely-disappointed-with). Because I have been that person on the tractor. (And right before I posted this, I saw [this tumblr post](http://magikarpballoons.tumblr.com/post/101304096399/wayward-dragons-im-going-to-be-severely), which ALSO needs writing. Like, right now. But I need to go to bed. So, tag, you're it?)
> 
> **Warnings:** CA:TWS spoilers, A:AOU spoiler, heavy cursing, insensitive 9/11 reference

\- - -

**Meanwhile, Back at ~~the Ranch~~ Clint Barton’s Farm…**

Aww, tractor. 

Clint shoves hopefully at the throttle, and the gear-shift, but nope, sorry, folks, this tractor’s going as fast as it’s gonna go. He hunkers down a little, partly to keep the bugs out of his eyes, but mostly to avoid showing his face to the fifteen people who are going to floor it by him just as soon as he gets to the passing zone. He’s pretty sure most of them won't give a damn what he looks like, but hey, he used to do anonymity for a living. Call it a habit. 

He thinks maybe should have sprung for that sweet New Holland with the enclosed cab, the radio and the GPS system, even if it was fifteen grand more than the used John Deere he’s trundling along in. It’s not like he doesn’t have the money, what with the sorry-you-were-brain-napped-but-we-don’t-trust-you-have-a-ton-of-money-instead severance package from SHIELD. Still, Clint’s an old-fashioned kind of guy, what with the bows and arrows and the near-total lack of tech savvy (er, multi-million dollar airplanes don’t count, it took _years_ of training before he kicked ass with a Quinjet), and green-and-yellow color scheme seems so traditional. New Hollands are all blue these days, and it’s a very nice shade of blue, but he’s always going to see John Deere green when he thinks of tractors. 

He steers toward the shoulder as much as he can, when the double-yellow line turns into single dashes, and doesn’t flip off any of the cars that gun their engines as they pass, even though he really wants to. New farm, new state, new start. 

Aww, fuck it. He gives two birds to the Acura that guns it _and_ honks its horn, holding the gesture until the car is well out of sight. “And your piece-of-shit foreign car, too!” he yells, just to complete the cliche redneck persona he’s been working on in his head. 

The one he used to disavow at every opportunity, when he was younger. 

The tractor rolls on in a perfectly straight line without his input, so Clint makes a game of putting his hands behind his head and kicking a foot up onto the loader arm any time a car goes by. It’s another seven miles to his place, and there’s plenty of opportunities to fuck with people. He keeps it up until a sheriff’s cruiser pulls alongside. The deputy in the passenger seat gives him a Look over top of a pair of aviators, and god, this county really is one giant cliche, Clint thinks, as he sit up straight and puts his hands back on the wheel. The deputy nods in approval; the cruiser speeds away. Clint thinks there’s a metaphor there, somewhere, but fuck it, he’s a farmer now, he doesn’t have to be a poet any more than he did when he was killing people for a living. 

Well, okay, he’s not really a farmer, yet: he’s just some guy with a hundred acres and a tractor. And also a batwing. He’d bought the batwing, sight unseen, months before the tractor, just because the name was so cool. Now he’s going to hook up his most expensive impulse buy _ever_ to his new used John Deere, and go mow himself some of that rolling pasture in the back forty. 

Clint has a back forty

He’s adopting some donkeys to put on it.

Life is kind of awesome. 

*-*-*-*

Oh, wow, okay, life _sucks_. 

Clint gets exactly one network channel over the air, the satellite dish company won’t be here until Monday, and he’s used up most of his mobile data plan watching Dog Cops fanvids on YouTube. 

Epically. Bad. Timing. 

Shit is going down in D.C., in a spectacularly bad way, and Clint’s phone is telling him that he needs to upgrade his data plan or he’s going to be cut off from news about the fucking Triskelion making like god-damned 9/11, and what the actual fuck is going on?

He hits OK on the little notice box, and, oh, it’s just going to charge him extra. Fine, whatever. 

Twitter and Facebook keep freezing up, but CNN and C-SPAN both have a working live-stream, complete with panicked, repetitive and totally unhelpful commentary. The Triskelion is still standing, though there are twenty or so floors missing from one tower. Three heli-carriers form a mass of smoking rubble around Roosevelt Island; gouts of steam shoot up from the wreckage lying in the water. 

Jesus Christ, Clint thinks, and wonders if it’s better that he’s not a part of that world anymore, or worse. 

He texts Nat, then calls her, but all her regular numbers are dead. There’s a single text on two of his burner phones: _SHIELD is HYDRA. Stay away. Read the files_.

What files?

Oh. 

Holy shit. 

He trashes and dumps both the burner phones - because what’s a septic tank good for if not destroying high-end electronics? - and settles in to sort through the terabytes of data scattered, mirrored and backed up on a hundred servers across the world. 

Yes, okay, Clint knows about servers. There was a job once, he had to learn.

He looks through his own missions first, and a sick sense of dread builds in his gut, because now that he has the whole picture - now that he has the distance - he can see just how much of HYDRA’S dirty work he’s really done over the years. Kill that guy, blow this up, keep those two from meeting: beneficial at first glance, and even at a second, but in the larger analysis, the flaws are obvious. 

It’s terrifying to think of the intelligence behind this sort of planning. Whoever’s running this thing, Clint wonders if maybe they have the sort of insight only something alien - something like the Tesseract - can bestow.

Hell, maybe they _are_ alien.

Jesus. Jesus. For just a moment, he wants to crawl into his cellar and never come out again. 

Clint likes to think he’s a practical guy, though, when it comes down to it, so he only spends a minute or two shivering in terror. Then he pockets the Starkphone, puts his boots back on, and goes out to the barn.

The donkeys are coming tomorrow. He has gates to hang and a fence to mend before the little guys are safe in their new paddock.

On Thursday, he's gonna go see a guy about a zebra.

-end-


End file.
